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Speakers

Conference Host: Susan Moody

Was born and brought up in Oxford. She has published 34 crime and suspense novels, including the Penny Wanawake series and the Cassandra Swann bridge series. She has also written many stand-alone novels, among them Losing Nicola and, most recently, A Final Reckoning. The Colour of Hope was an international best-seller and translated into many languages. Her novelization of the Gold Blend coffee ads, Love Over Gold, reached the Sunday Times best-seller lists. Sadly, it was written under a pseudonym! She is a past Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association, a member of the Detection Club, a past Writer-in-Residence at the Universities of Tasmania and Copenhagen, and a past President of the International Association of Crime Writers. She and her husband divide their time between south-west France and south-east Kent.

Taking part:

Quentin Bates escaped English suburbia as a teenager at the end of the 70’s. A gap year in Iceland turned into a gap decade before returning to England with a family, a language and a profession acquired in the far north.The joys of crime writing follow a dozen years as a journalist on an obscure nautical trade magazine. He has written a series of novels and
novellas set in Iceland and has since turned to translation with four of Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series published by Orenda Books. The fifth book of the series is due later this year, to be followed by two novels by Lilja Sigurðardóttir.

Steph Broadribb was born in Birmingham and grew up in Buckinghamshire. Most of her working life has been spent between the UK and USA. As her alter ego – Crime Thriller Girl – she indulges her love of all things crime fiction by blogging at https://crimethrillergirl.com/ , where she interviews authors and reviews the latest releases. Steph is an alumni of the MA in Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) at City University London, and she trained as a bounty hunter in California. She lives in Buckinghamshire surrounded by horses, cows and chickens. Her debut thriller, Deep Down Dead, has been called ‘Fast, confident and suspenseful’ by Lee Child, while Mark Billingham called it ‘A real cracker … Steph Broadribb kicks ass, as does her ace protagonist’ and Ian Rankin said ‘Like Midnight Run, but much darker … really, really good’. The sequel, Deep Blue Trouble, will be out in 2018.

Fiona Cummins is an award-winning former Daily Mirror showbusiness journalist and a graduate of the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course. Rattle, her debut novel, was sold at auction to Pan Macmillan in the UK and was the subject of fiercely contested five-way auction in Germany. It will be published in several other territories, including Italy, Poland and the US. The book has also been optioned for TV by the producers of Kick-Ass and Miss Sloane. Rattle has been described by Queen of Crime Val McDermid as ‘a terrific read…head and shoulders above most of the competition.’ Fiona lives in Essex with her family.

Katerina Diamond was born in Weston in the seventies. She moved to Thessaloniki in Greece and attended Greek school where she learnt Greek in just 6 months. After her parents’ divorce, they relocated to Devon. After school, and working in her uncle’s fish and chip shop, she went (briefly) to university at Derby, where she met her husband and had two children. Katerina now lives in the East Kent Coast with her husband and children. Her debut novel, The Teacher, was a No.1 bestseller in ebook, and a Sunday Times bestseller in paperback. Her second novel The Secret was No.1 bestseller in ebook, too. She is currently working on book three.

Claire Evans is an established business specialist in the UK television industry. After finishing her law degree, she qualified as an accountant, but realising her mistake quickly ran away to work at the National Theatre before finally landing a job at the BBC. Once there, she rose through the ranks to head up operations and business affairs across the TV commissioning teams. In drama, she led the BBC’s commercial relationships with the Independent production sector and a wide range of international co-producers and distributors. She left the BBC in 2013 to pursue her writing career. Since then she has advised a number of drama and film production companies, most recently working on The Honourable Woman and Doctor Foster. She is also now the Chief Operating Officer at Two
Brothers Pictures Ltd, the company responsible for Fleabag and both series of The Missing on the BBC.

Barry Forshaw is one of the UK’s leading experts on crime fiction and film. His latest books include Brit Noir, Euro Noir, Nordic Noir, British Crime Film and British Gothic Cinema. Other work includes Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction, and the Keating Award-winning British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, along with a book on Italian cinema and the first biography of Stieg Larsson. He writes for various national newspapers, edits Crime Time (http://www.crimetime.co.uk/), and is a regular broadcaster. He has been Vice Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, and has taught an MA course at City University on the history of crime fiction.

Hugh Fraser is is perhaps best known for playing Captain Hastings in the television series “Agatha Chritsie’s Poirot” and appearing as the Duke of Wellington in “Sharpe”. Hugh is also an accomplished Bass Guitar player and musician – he co-wrote the theme tune to the popular children’s television programme ‘Rainbow’. His first novel, the crime thriller HARM was published in 2015, followed by THREAT in 2016. The third book in the trilogy MALICE will be published in 2017.

Guy Fraser-Sampson is an established writer whose three ‘Mapp and Lucia’ continuation novels were all optioned by BBC television. Praised by other writers such as Chris Brookmyre and Christopher Fowler, his Hampstead Murders series blends contemporary narrative with references to famous fictional detectives in a mix which has been described as quirky, intelligent, and ‘a love letter to the detective novel’. Guy’s latest novel, Miss Christie Regrets is published in January 2017.

Frances Fyfield spent much of her early professional life as a criminal lawyer, work which has informed many of hers. She has been the recipient of both the Silver and Gold Crime Writers Association Awards, plus the Roman Policiere award in France. She is also the Presenter of Radio 4’s Tales from the Stave a long running series looking at original scores of famous pieces of music alongside those who have performed them, from Porgy and Bess in Chicago, to The Lark Ascending in the London Library. Born in and educated in Derbyshire, she shed the rural life for a degree in English in Newcastle, and qualified as a solicitor in London in the 1970s. After many years of murder and mayhem, she realised she knew nothing about anything and better write about it instead. Perhaps the most consistent love affair of her life is her collection of British twentieth century art, featuring many portraits of women. No accident that her most recent series of novels feature nutty art collectors and the consequences of their obsessions. For which they would murder. Frances lives in London and in Deal, which is home, with a constant view of the sea.

Paul Harrison is a retired police officer, with a successful career that spanned three decades. During that time, he worked on some memorable high profile investigations, and interviewed countless criminals who operated within the darker side of humanity. Paul began writing and had his first book published during his time in the police. Since then, he has gone on to write 34 books, mainly in the field of true crime. Now he has turned all that experience into writing crime fiction. On retiring from the police, he spent time working with the English Judiciary, at the Royal Courts of Justice, London, during which time, he gained what he describes as ‘an eye opening insight’ into what really happens behind the scenes of a criminal trial or civil hearing.

David Hewson is the author of the four-part Pieter Vos series set in Amsterdam, three adaptations of the award-winning TV series ‘The Killing’ in Copenhagen, and the ten-book Nic Costa series set in Italy. His audio adaptations of Shakespeare, Macbeth, Hamlet and most recently Romeo and Juliet, narrated by Richard Armitage, have been shortlisted for Audies, the audiobook Oscars. His Dutch crime books are published simultaneously in Holland. The third, ‘Little Sister’, won the award for best translated thriller of 2016 in the Netherlands. Later this year (2017) his second dramatic adaptation of Shakespeare, a new take on ‘Romeo and Juliet’ will be produced by Audible Germany, a ten-hour audio expansion of both Shakespeare’s version and the original Italian sources of the story. A former journalist with the Times and Sunday Times David lives near Wye, Kent.

Mark Hill is a London-based full-time writer of novels and scripts. He is currently writing book two in his DCI Ray Drake series, the first of which – Two O’Clock Boy – is published in paperback original in April 2017. Formerly he was a journalist and a producer at BBC Radio 2 across a range of major daytime shows and projects. He has won two Sony Gold Awards.

S.J.I. (Susi) Holliday grew up in Haddington, East Lothian. She spent many years working in her family’s newsagent and pub before escaping to St Andrews, Dundee and Edinburgh to study microbiology and statistics. She has worked as a statistician in the pharmaceutical industry for over sixteen years, but it was on a six-month round-the-world-trip that she took with her husband in 2006 that she rediscovered her passion for writing. After abandoning her first attempt at a paranormal thriller, she wrote hundreds of crime and horror short stories before finally sitting down to write the book she was always meant to write. Based on a true-life creepy event, Black Wood is the first of a loosely-linked series set in the fictional town of Banktoun, followed by Willow Walk and The Damselfly. She loves walking, travelling, and exploring, and currently lives in London, except when the magnetic pull of Scotland attracts her back. Often found drinking hot chocolate in cafes, people watching in pubs, hanging around at book festivals.

Janet Laurence’s A Fatal Freedom, published in May 2015 by the Mystery Press, is the second in her Ursula Grandison Edwardian mystery series and she is now working on the third. She is also the author of the Darina Lisle culinary and Canaletto historical crime series, and of Writing Crime Fiction – Making Crime Pay, published by Aber. She regularly runs crime writing workshops and is currently Chairman of the CWA International Dagger judging panel.

Andy Lawrence is a commentator on European films, TV, and literature. A longstanding appreciation of European culture started at an early age after seeing The Singing Ringing Tree and Kenneth Williams read Nils-Olof Franzén’s Agaton Sax stories on Jackanory. He has written for Scan Magazine, Nordic Noir and Beyond and academic journals. He is currently researching a book on Nordic cinema. He runs the blog Euro But Not Trash ( https://eurodrama.wordpress.com/ ). He is @AndyLawrence5 on Twitter.

Simon Michael is the author of the best-selling London 1960s noir gangster series featuring his antihero barrister, Charles Holborne. Simon writes from personal experience: a barrister for 37 years, he worked in the Old Bailey and other criminal courts defending and prosecuting a wide selection of murderers, armed robbers, con artists and other assorted villainy. The 1960s was the “Wild West” of British justice, a time when the Krays, Richardsons and other violent gangs fought for control of London’s organised crime, and the corrupt Metropolitan Police beat up suspects, twisted evidence and took a share of the criminal proceeds. Simon weaves into his thrillers genuine court documents from cases on which he worked on the big stories of the 1960s. Simon was published here and in America in the 1980s and returned to writing when he retired from the law in 2016. The first books in the Charles Holborne Series, The Brief and An Honest Man, garnered strong reviews for their authenticity and excitement. Simon’s theme is alienation; Holborne, who dabbled in crime and in serious violence before becoming a barrister, is an outsider both in the East End where he grew up and in the Temples of the Law where he faces daily class and religious prejudice. He has been compared to Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, honourable men surrounded by corruption and violence, trying to steer an honest course. The third book in the series, The Lighterman, will be published in June 2017.

Barbara Nadel currently writes two crime fiction series. One, the Ikmen series, is set in Istanbul and the other, the Hakim and Arnold mysteries, are set in the East End of London. A psychology graduate, Barbara worked in psychiatric institutions for many years before becoming a full-time writer. In 2005 she won the CWA Silver Dagger for her Ikmen book ‘Deadly Web’ as well as the Swedish Flintaxe for historical fiction in 2006. A regular contributor to the internationalcrimeauthors.com blog she is also a crime fiction agony aunt known as Mary Mystery and a new writer mentor for Barking and Dagenham Libraries. She lives in Essex with her husband in a house they are allowed to inhabit by Lily their Siamese cat.

Ayo Onatade is a commentator on all things crime fiction related. She has been reading crime fiction for over forty years. She also writes articles and gives papers on all aspects of the crime and mystery genre. She is a member of the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain (CWA) and is currently Chair of the CWA Short Story Dagger. She also writes for Crimespree Magazine and is currently one of the Judges for the Nagio Marsh Award. She can also be found reviewing at Shotsmag.co.uk and runs the Shotsmag Confidential blog (Shotsmagcouk.blogspot.co.uk). When she is not involved in crime fiction then she works with senior judges at the Supreme Court in London.

Daniel Pembrey grew up in Nottinghamshire beside Sherwood Forest. He studied history at Edinburgh University and received an MBA from INSEAD business school. Daniel then spent over a decade working in America and more recently Luxembourg, coming to rest in Amsterdam and London — dividing his time now between these two great maritime cities. He is the author of The Harbour Master, the first book in the Henk van der Pol detective series, and several short thriller stories, and he contributes articles to publications including The Financial Times, The Times, The Guardian, The New European and The Field. The Henk van der Pol series is the product of several months spent living in the docklands area of East Amsterdam, where Daniel counted De Druif bar as his local.

Linda Regan is a successful actress. She has written all her life, but although had sold short stories for radio and magazines she struggled to get any of her novels published. Ten years ago she was abducted in her car at knife point. She decided to use the terror she experienced in a positive way and wrote her first crime novel: Behind You, a who dunnit set backstage in a pantomime, where a killer is on the loose. It was picked up and published. She has since written seven successful crime novels. Her latest, SisterHoods, is set on a crime-ridden high rise estate in South London, run by a girl-gang called the AlleyCats. Gang warfare is rife around their area, and owning a turf is a dangerous business, every other gang around wants it for its drug pickings, and are willing to kill to get it. And the police are desperate to get all the drug barons off the street. When murder raises its head, the AlleyCats play their most dangerous game yet. They take on the job of grassing to the feds. The stakes are high, but with fed-help they can protect the lives of the vulnerable young-uns on their estate as well as keeping their pensioners safe, and making money to build better and safer lives for the residents on the estate. But what about their own safety- the price of being a grass is death, and now there is a traitor in their camp.

Rod Reynolds was born in London and, after a successful career in advertising, working as a media buyer, he decided to get serious about writing. He completed City University’s Crime Writing Masters course and his first novel, The Dark Inside, was published by Faber in 2015; it was longlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger as well as being selected as a WH Smith Fresh Talent pick. The sequel, Black Night Falling, was published in 2016, which The Guardian described as, ‘Pitch perfect American noir.’ A third book featuring investigative reporter Charlie Yates will follow in 2018. Rod lives in London with his wife and daughters

Leigh Russell is the author of the internationally bestselling Geraldine Steel series: Cut Short, Road Closed, Dead End, Death Bed, Stop Dead, Fatal Act, Killer Plan and Murder Ring. Cold Sacrifice, the first in a spin off series featuring Ian Peterson, was published in 2013 followed by Race to Death in 2014 and Blood Axe in 2015. Cut Short was shortlisted for a CWA Dagger Award, Stop Dead was a Finalist for The People’s Book Prize, and her books are frequently #1 on Amazon Kindle and iTunes. She is published in the UK by No Exit Press, by HarperCollins in the USA, Bastei Lubbe in Germany and also in French, Italian and Turkish. Leigh studied at the University of Kent gaining a Masters degree in English and American literature. For many years a secondary school English teacher, Leigh now writes full-time and teaches creative writing. She is married with two daughters and lives in north west London.

“William Shaw is, quite simply, an outstanding storyteller,” says Peter May. Shaw’s fourth novel, The Birdwatcher, set on the Kent coast, was picked by The Telegraph as one of their best new crime books of 2016. The story of a policeman who is forced to confront the darkness of his own past during an investigation into the killing of a neighbour, The Sunday Mirror called the book “utterly compulsive.” Barry Forshaw, writing in The Independent, said, “The Birdwatcher is Shaw’s most accomplished book yet, and a demonstration of why so many of his fellow writers have lined up to praise him.” Until turning to crime writing, his best-known book had been Westsiders, the non-fiction account of a year spent among the young men of South Central Los Angeles. Patrick Neate, writing in The Guardian, picked it as one of the ten best books ever written about hip hop. In May, riverrun publish the fourth in his Breen & Tozer series of detective fiction novels set in the late 1960s, Sympathy for the Devil. The first, A Song from Dead Lips was nominated for a Barry Award; the third A Book of Scars, was a runner up in last year’s CWA Endeavour Historical Daggers. Sympathy for The Devil is set in the summer of 1969 and opens with the death of a former Rolling Stone.

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer and features writer from New Zealand, now living in London. He began devouring mystery tales as a child, starting with the Hardy Boys, Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, and Agaton Sax. Over the past few years he has reviewed several hundred crime and thriller novels for dozens of national and regional newspapers, lifestyle and specialist magazines, and websites in Europe, North America, and Australasia. Craig loves talking with others about crime writing, and has interviewed almost 150 authors, onstage or for print and online features. He has appeared at numerous books festivals, spoken on national radio about the genre, and is the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. He is also the creator of the Crime Watch blog, and the ‘Murder in the Library’ event series in New Zealand.

Nicola Upson was born in Suffolk and read English at Downing College, Cambridge. She has worked in theatre and as a freelance journalist, and is the author of two non-fiction works and the recipient of an Escalator Award from the Arts Council England. Her debut novel, An Expert in Murder, was the first in a series of crime novels whose main character is Josephine Tey – one of the leading authors of Britain’s Golden Age of crime writing.

Louise Voss has been writing for the past seventeen years, with many twists and turns in her career. She started her publishing life with four novels for Transworld/Black Swan, the first of which, To Be Someone, was published in 2001 with its own CD soundtrack. To Be Someone was followed by three more contemporary women’s fiction novels, Are You My Mother? Lifesaver, and Games People Play, until she switched to publishing thrillers with Mark Edwards in 2011. She and Mark were the first British indie authors to reach No.1 on the Amazon charts with Catch Your Death, where they stayed for the month of June 2011, with their novel Killing Cupid also at No. 2. This led to a four-book deal with Harper Collins. Her first solo thriller, The Venus Trap, was published by Thomas & Mercer in 2015, as was her sixth co-written novel with Mark, The Blissfully Dead, a sequel to the successful From The Cradle (the first in the DI Patrick Lennon series, both also published by Thomas & Mercer).

Sarah Ward is the author of two DC Childs novels, In Bitter Chill and A Deadly Thaw set in the Derbyshire Peak District where she lives. Her third book in the series, A Patient Fury, is out in September. On her blog, Crimepieces (www.crimepieces.com), she reviews the best of current crime fiction published around the world, and she has also reviewed for Euro Crime and CrimeSquad. She is a judge for the Petrona Award for Scandinavian translated crime novels.